In yesterday's essay, I reached out to overseas readers, asking them to update me on how drug prohibition is playing out in their home countries.1 I did so in order to demonstrate that the prohibitionist mindset knows no boundaries. Everywhere we look, it has empowered logically challenged bureaucrats, judges, prosecutors and law enforcement personnel to behave inhumanely in the name of "fighting drugs." In doing so, such professionals demonstrate their embarrassing ignorance of world history. They do not realize that drug use has inspired entire religions, as in the case of the Vedic and hence the Hindu religion.2 They have apparently never heard of William James, the Father Of American Psychology, who was convinced of the philosophical significance of so-called altered states.3 They have apparently never heard of ethnobotanist Richard Schultes4 or chemist Alexander Shulgin5 or drug researchers like Stanislav Grof6 and James Fadiman.7 And so they set forth in ignorant bliss on a superstitious campaign to destroy basic freedoms under the supposition that "anything goes" in our efforts to push back against the inanimate scapegoat called "drugs." This is especially true in the legal realm. A modern society's legislative ability to punish a drug user seems to be limited only by the imagination of their prosecutors. The M.O. is always the same, however: come up with any punishment that you please for a drug user, and then retroactively give that punishment the fig leaf of propriety with the choplogic of your choice. The judge will be sure to see things your way provided only that your goal is to "send a message" to those "evil" users of psychoactive substances.
Alcohol makes me sleepy. But NOT coca wine. The wine gives you an upbeat feeling of controlled energy, without the jitters of coffee and without the fury of steroids. It increases rather than dulls mental focus.
Drug prohibition began as a racist attempt to prevent so-called "miscegenation." The racist's fear was not that a white woman would use opium or marijuana or cocaine, but that she might actually fall in love with a Chinese, Hispanic or Black person respectively.
Self-medicating has always been the most basic of human rights, until the medical industry demonized the practice for obvious financial reasons.
There will always be people who don't use drugs wisely, just as there are car drivers who don't drive wisely, and rock climbers who fall to their death. America needs to grow up and accept this, while ending prohibition and teaching safe use.
Just saw a prosecutor gloating about the drug dealers she has taken down.How much is she getting paid to play whack-a-mole?
What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
The DEA is a Schedule I agency. It has no known positive uses.
Laughing gas inspired the philosophy of William James. Outlawing N20 is outlawing academic freedom. Laughing gas should be available for the suicidal. Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.
If psychoactive drugs had never been criminalized, science would never have had any reason or excuse for creating SSRIs that muck about unpredictably with brain chemistry. Chewing the coca leaf daily would be one of many readily available "miracle treatments" for depression.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for those who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
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